To Get Revenge
by Haloplayer14
Summary: 1200 years after Gromph trapped Nimor in the Shadow Plane, Nimor returns, with revenge in mind. Please, review...
1. Security Breach

R E V E N G E  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this story.  
  
Chapter 1: Darkness  
  
It was dark that night, and very quiet around the Baenre Technologies building. A light breeze blew through the alleyways lifting discarded papers and dust clouds for a moment, before dropping them again. Dan was glad he was inside the building. He had been assigned the night watch shift along with his friend Kyle. All they had to do was watch the security cameras until morning.  
  
Dan looked over to the football game his Drow friend was watching. "Who's winning?" he asked.  
  
"Other team by seven points," Kyle replied.  
  
Dan took a sip of water and returned his attention to the security monitors. A flicker on one of the screens caught his attention, but nothing was there. I must be tired, he thought, and reclined in his chair a bit more.  
  
"No way, he caught it!" Kyle yelled. "He's going for it! Come on buddy, make that touchdown..." Then the lights went out, along with the TV.  
  
"Dammit!" Kyle pounded the desk in frustration.  
  
"Power outage, bummer," Dan said.  
  
"No," Kyle replied, "The top left screens are still on."  
  
"Breaker must have blown then."  
  
"Yeah," Kyle said. "Take a flashlight upstairs and see if you can find it. I'll stay here and reset the computers on backup power."  
  
Dan nodded and walked out the door, flashlight in hand. He quickly turned the light on as he entered total darkness and walked up the stairs to the top floor. There was a long, dark hallway at the top, with rooms and other hallways branching off from it.  
  
"What does it take to run a building like this?" he muttered to himself. He flashed the light around, looking for some clue as to where he should start.  
  
"Ah dammit.." Dan headed down a hallway to his left. Doors were spaced along the walls, each with a convenient label. The darkness seemed to close in even more on the man, grinding at his nerves as he walked along, searching for the electrical maintenance room.  
  
It wasn't quite a fear of darkness, but more a feeling of vulnerability. His eyes could only see as far as the flashlight's beam extended, and even then it wasn't illuminating a wide enough area. An attack could come from any one of the shadows beside him, and he wouldn't be able to see his attacker in time.  
  
Dan shook his head and shrugged off his uneasiness. Why would someone be up here at this time of night? He opened a door labeled 'Electrical' and walked in.  
  
Electrical boxes lined every wall of the room, and conduits ran along the ceiling, through the floor and between boxes. Fans in the ceiling sucked hot air out, and blew cool air in, keeping the room at a reasonable temperature, but making it all the noisier.  
  
"Can't even hear yourself think," Dan grumbled to himself as he scanned the room for a red light indicating that the corresponding breaker had blown. He frowned upon seeing that every light was green. There was one section though that was black.  
  
"The hell?" he muttered as he walked over and found three breakers laying on the floor, a mess of wires cluttering three empty slots in the electrical box. He knelt down and picked up one of the heavy breakers. A white sticker on the front labeled it as the 23rd floor breaker: the floor that the security room was on.  
  
Dan took out his radio and called Kyle on the security channel. "Kyle, you there?" He waited a moment, then called again upon hearing no immediate response.  
  
After another pause, Kyle replied, "What's up?"  
  
"I found three disconnected breakers up here. Breakers to the security floor, attic and floor 18."  
  
"Come again?" Kyle called back.  
  
The radio erupted into intense static for a brief moment, then went normal. "What the hell?" Dan wondered aloud, then paused when he heard a very faint noise, and felt the floor vibrate.  
  
Only one thing could make a concrete floor vibrate like that: the freight elevator. "Kyle!" Dan called, suddenly serious. "Grab your gun and get down to floor 18!"  
  
Dan got up and ran out the door, as Kyle replied, "Roger that!" The vibrations through the floor intensified as the freight elevator passed the attic floor. Dan reached the bottom of the stairs as Kyle passed, and caught up with him in a matter of seconds.  
  
"What's going on?" Kyle asked as they reached the passenger elevator.  
  
Dan punched the "Down" button and replied, "The freight elevator is down at 18. Nobody should be on that floor this late at night."  
  
The elevator doors opened, and half a minute later, Dan and Kyle emerged on floor 18, guns ready.  
  
"Where are they?" Kyle whispered.  
  
Dan shook his head and slowly walked forward, sweeping the hallways with his gun. They continued down the main hallway, passing a sign that read, "Floor 18: Weapons Development."  
  
Kyle paused to let his eyes revert to the infrared spectrum, then continued down another hallway, peering into the weapons labs through thick glass windows. In the blur of colors created by the heat in the building, he barely made out a figure moving behind a worktable.  
  
Spotting a pair of red-glowing eyes, Kyle darted past the window and backed against the wall, bringing his gun up. Checking to make sure the safety was off, he slipped around the corner and yelled, "Freeze!"  
  
The pair of eyes whirled around, then disappeared. Kyle's sharp sense of hearing picked up a muttered curse word and the sound of a clip being loaded into a gun. He then heard a high pitched whistle before the Drow behind the work table jumped up and fired a round of shots.  
  
Kyle dropped and rolled to the right, planted his feet and brought his gun up to fire three shots at the glowing figure coming towards him. The figure weaved through the shots with impossible agility, and fired another round.  
  
A glowing blue light illuminated the room then, as a magical portal opened and three more Drow stepped through, called by the magical whistle the other Drow had blown.  
  
One of the Drow muttered an incantation and waved his hands in Kyle's direction. Kyle immediately felt his limbs stiffen from the binding spell. Damn, he thought as he helplessly watched Dan come around the corner, only to be frozen as well. Didn't see that coming.  
  
Dan and Kyle were ignored then, as the other Drow went to work. A table was flipped out of the way, equipment was thrown carelessly aside as they made room for a hovertruck that had been parked in the hall. One Drow wizard signaled a worker to move some equipment in front of a pallet, then signaled another to get the truck.  
  
As the equipment was moved out of the way, Kyle got a glimpse of what was on the pallet. Shit, so that's what they're after! The device on the pallet consisted of four metal cylinders surrounding a larger cylinder covered in magnetic coils and rubber hoses. This was one of the most advanced devices in the building. This was the Discharger. 


	2. Enter: Gromph Baenre

Disclaimer: Don't own anything in here.  
  
Chapter 2  
  
This is really starting to hurt, Kyle thought as he continued to stand in place on the eighteenth floor, still held by the binding spell. Sunlight shone in through the windows, and a digital clock lying in a pile of junk read 6:00 a.m. Both he and Dan had been frozen for three hours after the other Drow had left along with the Discharger.  
  
Relief flooded through both of them as they heard the passenger elevator ascend from the first floor. Someone was in the building, probably the morning chef coming in to prepare the cafeteria.  
  
The elevator continued past the eighteenth floor and stopped at the top floor of the building. Gromph Baenre stepped out as the doors opened, the centuries old Drow archmage still keeping the look of a young Elf in his early 100's from the enchanted Brooch of Eternal Youth pinned to the front of his black suit.  
  
Near 1100 years ago, the wizards of Menzoberranzan had defeated the ruling Matron Mothers in a devastating war. With Lloth already gone, the Wizards formed a new government and extended their rule to the surface. As time passed, the Realms began producing new technologies. Gunpowder brought new weapons into production, steel and iron made new vehicles possible, flight was eventually achieved, and trade across the different lands brought up new ideas, which quickly spread.  
  
Gromph had found a profitable business years ago in writing computer software, and he was now the owner of one of the largest technology companies in the realms. Though he continued to experiment and create numerous magical items in his free time.  
  
Gromph walked into his office and sat down at the large oak desk in the center. With merely a thought from the archmage, a computer monitor rose from the center of the desk, along with a keyboard and mouse. "Where are my security guards?" Gromph muttered to himself as he opened an application, and a black triangular prism on the desk hummed to life. A blue bolt of lightning shot from the top of the prism, and separated into two, which spread apart, leaving a dark hole in midair, a window into the Astral Plane.  
  
Silvery chords of light ran by the window, pulsating and thrumming with a magical hum. This was a system developed by Gromph years before, a system that integrated magic with modern technology to allow access to the Astral Plane from a computer. That wasn't the half of it though.  
  
Every living being in the Realms has a physical presence in the Material Plane of existence. The mental presence of every living being is in the Astral Plane. Beings that exist on the material plane have both a physical presence and a mental presence, whereas beings that normally live in the Astral Plane have either one or the other. Astral dwelling beings are mentally present until they are summoned to the Material Plane.  
  
Nearly every Man, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, etc. in the Realms had their mental presence logged in Gromph's system at birth. The system was designed to monitor the lives of every being in the Realms, and a force of trained system operators (The Sys-Ops) handled thousands of suspicious reports each day. Some were murders, and others were robberies, bomb threats, etc. Activities unrelated to crime were ignored to ensure privacy among the public.  
  
The health of the general public is closely monitored as well. Abnormal pulses in certain Astral threads are picked up by a computer system and sent to the Sys-Ops. The Sys-Ops determine how serious the situation is, and are authorized to dispatch the nearest medical team if necessary.  
  
Two miles below the main building was the computer system that monitored the Astral threads of life. Protected by three feet of Grade-A Titanium and a six inch thick coat of lead, the machine could withstand a direct surface blast from a fifty megaton Nuclear Warhead.  
  
The computer itself was no less impressive. Two hundred and seventy 24- terabyte hard drives stored countless numbers of uplinks from the Material to the Astral Plane. Seventeen thousand 15-Gigahertz CPU's processed billions of functions daily, many of them queries from the criminal record, or health record mainframes.  
  
The entire system was basically rigged to monitor the lives of every person in the realms.  
  
Gromph typed in the I.D. numbers of both security guards, and the view from the planar window moved like a camera through countless numbers of other silvery threads. The window stopped at two threads, which, unlike the others, were motionless except for a few slight tremors indicating a heartbeat and breathing. The computer monitor showed that both were on the eighteenth floor.  
  
Gromph was immediately on alert. The eighteenth floor... Weapons development. What the hell are they doing down there!? Waving his hand, he closed the portal and slapped the top of the desk, the prism immediately sinking into it.  
  
The watch on Gromph's wrist was another development of his, which stored numerous spells in a 728-megabyte chip. With only a thought from the user, any spell could be called upon and used. As with any spells, there were limitations to the amount of magical energy that could be used, and each spell in memory needed approximately six hours of recharge time after an average of eight uses.  
  
Gromph called up a magical doorway to floor eighteen and stepped through. His shoulders drooped when he entered the lab and saw Dan and Kyle frozen in place. "Lloth be damned! What in the Nine Hells happened here?" The counterspell Gromph knew was not in his watch, but a muttered incantation and a few hand gestures released the spell, and Dan and Kyle fell to the floor in pain.  
  
"What happened?" Gromph asked again.  
  
"The Discharger...." Kyle managed to gasp, "stolen..."  
  
Discharger... The word took a moment to register in Gromph's mind, then his eyes widened. "You're telling me that a weapon of mass destruction was stolen!?"  
  
Gromph had given extra funding to the weapons department for the Discharger project. The Discharger was built with the latest plasma technology, and was a new breed of weapon that could be set to a certain yield between one and twenty Megatons. Four tanks fed hydrogen gas through a microwave chamber and into a cylinder wrapped in superconducting magnetic coils where twelve high output lasers heated it to the point where plasma was created. The magnetic coils contained the plasma until the onboard computer sent the detonation signal, then they released.  
  
"Who were they?" Gromph questioned.  
  
"Drow," Dan spoke for the first time.  
  
"Shit..." Gromph closed his eyes and thought for a minute before speaking again. "I'm going to call Jaradir on this one. This matter stays in the building, we do not want anyone outside to know that a weapon of mass destruction is in the hands of thieves!  
  
Jaradir was the head of security, a five-hundred year old Dwarf who had spent sixty-seven years as an FBI agent before better pay brought him to Baenre Technologies. If anyone inside the business had the best chance of finding the weapon, it was him.  
  
Gromph looked down at his security guards and hid a look of disgust. "You'd best sit in the Jacuzzi for a while." He walked away without another word, leaving them to worry about the severe interrogation they were sure to receive from Jaradir.  
  
Kyle rolled over and let out a sigh. Awwww fuck... 


	3. Schedule Revision

Disclaimer: You've heard it already.

7:00 was when the building opened, the first to come in normally being the cooks, then at 7:30 came the relief team for the building's Nuclear Fusion power plant. The full security team came before anyone else the morning 'Discharger' was stolen.

Gromph made his way around the security officers flooding the weapons department to where Jaradir stood growling orders. The stocky Dwarf had been called one and a half hours before his shift, and standing there, shirt half tucked in, cap on sideways, one boot unlaced, Gromph could feel the intense heat emanating from him.

Jaradir hurriedly cleaned up his look and tamed down his enormous beard as Gromph approached. Standing straight, he tipped his cap and muttered, "Mornin' Master Baenre."

Gromph walked up and stood beside the dwarf, clasping his hands together behind his back. "Anything yet Jaradir?"

Jaradir let out a sigh. "The only thing we have is the recordings from the security cameras. We didn't get any faces though. Infrared sensors picked up body shapes moving around the floor, but they apparently used a cloaking spell of some sorts. Visual cameras didn't get a thing."

"How did they get in?" Gromph asked, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

Jaradir could tell that Gromph was fuming inside, so he chose his words carefully. "Our magic sensors detected an aura which we confirmed to be a portal when we compared it to our records. We believe they came in through this portal."

"Tell me," Gromph replied, his face glowing red to heat seeing eyes, "Why should we even need magic sensors when the closing security officer is supposed to activate the Anti-magic shield before he leaves each night?"

"Er... uh," Jaradir stuttered. He suddenly found the floor very interesting.

"Look at me," Gromph ordered, keeping his voice even.

Jaradir looked up, suddenly feeling very small under the intense gaze of Archmage Baenre.

"Who closed last night?" Seeing that Jaradir couldn't think of it right away, Gromph added, "Find them and question them thoroughly. Report any findings to me, nobody else. Understood?"

Jaradir breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. Gromph turned and walked away without another word.

Normally spending his mornings authorizing project plans, Gromph had to set a different schedule for the day. First on his new agenda was the order of transportation. He couldn't trust another agency to find the 'Discharger', everything stayed in the company.

Gromph's personal airship had been under construction since last year and was nearing completion, but would still be docked for another month at the rate of construction. By adding another work force, that time could be cut down two thirds at least. Gromph would just put projects in the Technology and Engineering departments on hold, and assign both employee staffs to the task.

As Gromph walked down to the Loading Dock, he ran his new schedule through his head. After taking care of transportation, the building's Nuclear Fusion Reactor was scheduled for a refuel, which required Gromph's presence every two months. The power plant ran on a very expensive Tritium/Deuterium pellet, which was shipped to the building in a ½ ton steel safe which only Gromph and the distributor knew the code to.

After the re-fueling, Gromph's presence was also required in the maintenance department. A data transmitter in the Astral Plane had been malfunctioning for some time now, and a repair team was being sent in. Insurance required that Gromph be there to instruct the team on how to proceed in an uncontrolled environment.

Gromph stepped into an elevator that would take him to the air bay, a mile long tunnel that led to the airship docks. The tunnel was a massive hole in the side of the Chinsilia Canyon, and was mainly the entrance for freight airships. The elevator doors opened and a light wind rushed in. Gromph stepped out and the wind became more intense.

¼ of a mile down, Gromph could see out of the tunnel and into the open expanse of air, where the occasional hawk would fly by on the thermals rising from the bottom of the canyon. The sounds of machinery echoed inside the air bay, some coming from the loading dock, other noises echoed in from the power plant fans, which continuously blew in hot air from the Fusion Reactor coolers. Gromph climbed into a golf cart sitting near the elevator and drove down the longer part of the tunnel.

He arrived at the loading dock in less than five minutes, and immediately drove to the monstrous structure that was his airship. Monstrous was almost an understatement. The ship was approximately 1020 feet long, 110 wide, 55 tall, and took up half the available docking space. It was a unique design Gromph had worked on for months, and the result was a vaguely whale shaped upper hull that was bisected by an enormous fan/turbine. A narrower section was attached to the underside, and was surrounded by an outside deck.

The engine was a Uranium 238/Plutonium 239 Breeder Reactor. Plutonium 239 is the primary fuel in a Breeder reactor, and is located in the center of the reactor vessel. A layer of Uranium 238 surrounds the Plutonium 239 fuel rods. When bombarded with free neutrons from Plutonium fission, Uranium 238 breeds the Plutonium 239 isotope, which can then fission normally.

The reactor was used to generate steam, which was then used to drive sets of fans spaced around the ship, as well as a power generator. Three Diesel generators backed up the Reactor in the case of a problem with the steam generator.

Gromph drove up to the construction site and was approached by the Engineering manager, a curly-haired halfling in a wheelchair. "Master Baenre!" he shouted over the noise. "I was not aware that you would be visiting today!"

Gromph nodded his head. "Frank, you no doubt felt the tightened security when you came in this morning?"

The halfling shrugged, his enormous belly shifting. "I... noticed, but I am not one to interfere in other people's business."

"Good," Gromph replied, "because I'm not going to tell you the details. I need to know where we're at on construction."

Frank shifted a joystick on his wheelchair and turned to face the ship. "I would say another month or so. We still need a full scale diagnostic, the reactor hasn't been run yet, and my guys are still wiring the Bridge."

"That's what I thought." Gromph sighed and pulled out a pocket computer. "If I assign the rest of the Engineering department, how long?"

Frank rubbed his chin and looked off into the distance. "Thirty-six more guys, that would cut it down to a couple weeks to a week and a half."

"Make it a week and a half," Gromph said as he pulled out a pen and tapped the screen on his computer.

"Yes Master Bae-,"

"And show me where we're at while I'm down here."

"Yes sir!" Frank turned a key on his wheelchair, and the small 3-cylider diesel underneath turned over and started. He sped back to the airship as Gromph climbed into the golf cart and followed.

A loading ramp extended down from the airship's storage bay, which was filled with pallets of components. Gromph and Frank waited for a forklift to back down the ramp before they proceeded.

The storage bay was an entire level by itself, with two cylindrical towers in the center. One tower was for the freight elevator, which ran to the top of the ship. The elevator ran to the reactor level only for authorized personnel with a key. The second tower held the passenger elevators, and was ringed with windows halfway up. Above the windows was an enormous steel crane used to load freight into the read of the storage bay. The freight controller's office was below the crane and had a 360-degree view of the bay.

Gromph and Frank rode up to the freight elevator doors, two 7-ton slabs of steel and lead that blocked the only entrance to the reactor levels. "You have a key Frank?" Gromph asked as he stepped out of the golf cart.

"Yes sir!" Frank replied as he pulled out a card and slid it into a slot next to the doors.

"Good," Gromph replied. "Make me a copy." The doors slid open with a hiss, and Frank drove his wheelchair inside, Gromph walking beside him.

That's it for this chapter, please review and let me know what you think!


	4. Nuclear Physics, And Then Some

Disclaimer: Anything in this story that relates to Forgotten Realms belongs to the Forgotten Realms people.

Nimor Imphraezel paced slowly back and forth in a dimly lit warehouse of an abandoned fish cannery. He was deep in thought as he walked past pallets of electronic hardware. A young Drow sat at a table beneath an orange light, paper in front of him, and quill in hand, waiting to write. "Dear Gromph," Nimor began.

"Dude, there's no way that thing could weigh eighteen tons!" Two other drow stood off to the side looking down at a titanium pallet. On the pallet rested a jet-black sphere the size of a marble.

"It's entirely possible!" the other Drow, whose name was Ysandro, replied. "When stars collapse on themselves, their atoms rearrange into denser substances."

"Bullshit!" the first Drow shot back. "Nothing can be that dense!"

"You don't believe me? Try to lift it."

The first Drow, whose name was Zeryk smirked at Ysandro and kneeled down, pinching the sphere between his fingers. He squeezed and his fingers slipped off. He glared at Ysandro. "You super-glued it didn't you?"

Ysandro shrugged. "Nimor would kill me if I did."

"To get revenge, Gromph," Nimor went on, "Is the sweetest feeling in the entire realms!"

A loud grunting noise caught Nimor's attention, and his sharp red eyes snapped over to Ysandro and Zeryk. Zeryk had his hands under the pallet's forklift openings, and was lifting as hard as he could.

"Leave it God Dammit!!" Nimor barked.

Zeryk jumped, then cringed under Nimor's glare. "My bad Boss!"

Nimor walked over to the pallet and looked at the sphere. "18.3 tons, to be exact, Zeryk." He waved his hand over the pallet and muttered a spell. The sphere floated off as if it were light as a feather.

Nimor summoned the sphere up into his hand, where the spell supported most of the weight, allowing Nimor to move it easily. He tossed it up and down a few times, then set it into a slow skim towards Zeryk, the spell holding it waist high. "Catch," he said.

Zeryk extended his hand and caught it, but the spell wasn't entirely in effect on him, and the sphere's inertia pushed his hand into his gut, and began pushing him towards the opposite warehouse wall. "What the hell? Nimor, stop it!"

Nimor laughed and watched on as Zeryk struggled to slow down. He hit the wall lightly, and doubled over as his hand was pushed deeper into his gut. "Point made, point made!" he yelled.

Nimor laughed some more. "Push you weakling!"

Zeryk grunted, and pushed with all his might, finally bringing the sphere to a stop, then reversing it's direction, ever so slowly. He put his feet against the wall and pushed with his legs, sending it at a snails pace towards Nimor.

Nimor crossed his arms, as if waiting impatiently, and the sphere dropped. It hit the floor with a tremendous cracking noise, and shattered a ten-foot diameter circle of concrete. Zeryk was thrown into the air and landed at Nimor's feet.

The unfortunate Drow was pulled roughly to his feet. "Make yourself useful for once!" Nimor growled threateningly. He slapped a credit chip into Zeryk's hand and shoved him towards the warehouse door. "Go buy us some lunch!"

Zeryk stumbled away as Nimor walked back to the table. "Where were we?"

The freight elevator reached the reactor level in less than a minute, doors sliding open upon arrival. Gromph strode into the room with Frank in tow, examining the interior as he did. The reactor level was nearly complete, with only a few wall panels removed, testing equipment wedged in between thousands of wires.

"What's the reactor status Frank?" Gromph asked.

"The reactor itself is complete, but we're not connected to the bridge yet, and the controllers for the coolant pumps haven't had a test run yet." Frank scratched his chin and motioned to the rear of the level. "Out of those three generators, we have one running so far, enough to provide power for a test run.

"Yes..." Gromph muttered. "Have a water line attached from the building. We're going to run a shakedown cycle, now."

"Yes sir!" Frank pulled out a cell phone and began talking to someone. Gromph walked over to the half-dome set into the deck, the reactor vessel visible through the double paned glass windows in the sides. Soft blue lights lit underneath the vessel as Gromph approached, the glow giving off an unexplainable aura. _The aura of power..._ Gromph decided.

A clunking noise underneath the ship sounded the arrival of the water line, and a loudspeaker above Gromph crackled to life. "All airship construction personnel, shakedown cycle will begin in twenty minutes. Any personnel not wearing a Nuclear Certification badge must leave the airship dock until further notice."

The sound of running liquid filled the reactor level as water began circulating through the reactor vessel. The freight elevator doors opened then, and a team of nuclear engineers flooded into the room. One was shouting orders as he walked toward Gromph with a laptop under his right arm.

"Mr. Baenre." The man nodded his head in greeting and set the laptop on the desk. "We don't have the controller software loaded into the rector computers yet, but we have it on here, we should be able to run a shakedown cycle without a problem. We've also added temporary controller software for the coolant pumps."

"Very well." Gromph carried the computer into the control room and plugged it into a nearby port. Taking a quick look at the source code, he ran the software, and seeming satisfied, turned to the man behind him. "The controls are set, your team may begin when ready."

The man nodded and walked over to the intercom headset lying on the control desk. The rest of the reactor team was out making last minute inspections, and they all looked up from their work when the intercom blared, "Reactor team, report."

The sole speaker in the control room clicked on as the team members made their reports.

"Pump status, green."

"Neutron injection system, green."

"Backup power, green."

"Control rods, green."

"Systems cross-check green across the board."

As the team filed into the control room, they sat down at their designated terminals and double-checked the system monitors. "We're ready," one called out.

The team director sitting next to Gromph tapped his keyboard. "Control rod interference is set at ninety percent. Awaiting your orders sir."

Gromph nodded. "Do it."

The director tapped the keyboard again, and the reactor monitors flickered, percentages and numbers dancing across the screens as the reactor quietly jumped to life.

"We have a sustained reaction fissioning at ten percent," one team member announced. "Core temperature at one-hundred-seventeen-point-eight-nine degrees and climbing."

The reactor level shuddered as the coolant pumps came online. Gromph stood up and addressed the director. "Keep it in shakedown mode for a full thirty-five hours and call me when you're done."

A few of the team members groaned, and one muttered, "..wife's gonna be pissed!"

The director glared at them then nodded to Gromph. "Will do sir."

"I'll take my leave then." Gromph turned and walked out the door.

The room erupted into a jumble of complaints all aimed at the director. "Hey, HEY!" he yelled above the voices. "You all know the drill, shakedown mode is the most critical time in a reactor's life. It's the time when something can go wrong! We'll just have to bear with the hours, order some pizza, bring down some movies, whatever floats your boat. Good? Okay!" He sat back down, folded his arms on the table and laid his head on them.

"Shitty..." he muttered.


	5. Complications

Chapter 5 

The rest of the building was up to full speed by the time Gromph arrived at the office floor again. His secretary, a young gold elf, greeted him, handed over some papers, and poured him a cup of coffee. Coffee in hand, he walked into his office and set the papers on his desk. He went over to a locked safe in the corner of the room, entered the digital combination, and opened it, grabbing the black briefcase inside before closing the door again.

"Irene," he said to his secretary as he exited, "call the reactor complex and let them know I'm on my way down."

"Yes Mr. Baenre."

Gromph looked out the window at a growing cover of darkening clouds, then turned and walked towards the elevator.

The reactor complex was located on the other side of the canyon, and could only be accessed via a secure transport system. Gromph took the elevator down to the transport level, which was actually below ground, and consisting of a large asphalt floor with four-hundred parking spaces available, and twelve transport tubes, six in and six out. The tubes were thick bluish plexi-glass structures striped with metal bands that ran out of the building and into the city, and across the canyon to the reactor complex. They were similarly designed for the vehicle that had replaced the four-wheeled automobile. The new "car" was a twelve-foot long cylinder with six wheels, two on top and two branching downwards diagonally on either side, which kept the machine centered in the tubing, while a series of electromagnets on the sides pulsed on and off to move it forward or backward. A secure fusion battery had been developed by Gromph himself to power the vehicle.

He pulled out his keychain as he neared his car and hit the top button on a remote, causing the top cover of the car to unlock and slide back, revealing the driver's seat and a holographic console. He climbed in and hit a button on the dashboard, which slid the cover back into place. Producing a digitally encrypted key, he inserted it into a slot in the dashboard and was immediately rewarded with a flash of lights as the holographic console came online. He waited for the software to load, then tapped a portion of the holo-display to activate the fusion battery.

Commandeering his vehicle out of the parking space, he turned and drove down the parking lane, then turned right and stopped in front of a large metal door. His holo-display beeped and a message appeared. He tapped a portion of the display, then entered a ten-digit code. The message disappeared and the door covering the exit tube slid smoothly aside.

-----

The warehouse was dark when Zeryk returned carrying a couple paper bags of Chinese food. "Hey Nimor!" he yelled as he closed the door, relying on his heat sensitive eyes to see into the darkness. "I got your shit here, chow down!" He carried the bags down a row of stacked pallets where Nimor had set up office. "Nimor?" He called again, warily. A single hanging light above Nimor's desk flickered dimly, casting shadows onto the floor, as it swung gently from side to side. _Wait, it's swinging? _That was his last thought as someone grabbed him from behind. The bags fell to the floor as the attacker drove a needle into Zeryk's right forearm and depressed the plunger. Blackness followed shortly after.

Ysandro stepped out of the shadows and approached Nimor, who was supporting the limp form of Zeryk. "Is he dead?" he asked.

"No," Nimor replied, "but he'll wish he was. All the others went insane. Let's get him to the operating table."

-----

"What do you mean they haven't docked yet?" Gromph asked quizzically as he stared down the youth in front of him.

"Sir, we got a call from the _Horizon_ about three hours ago. Apparently their reactor tripped an alarm and they had to dock in Quenak to get it analyzed."

Gromph shifted weight to his right foot. "Any idea when they will arrive?"

The young technician flipped through some papers on a clipboard. "The ships' log states that they checked out an hour ago. ETA is two hours."

"Fine," Gromph replied. "Get those freight doors shut then and have Katzig shut the reactor down in…" he glanced at his watch, "thirty minutes. In the meantime, get the Endalia power station on the phone and have them send an up-link to the guys in Power Management. We need backup power from them the moment that machine shuts down. They know what to do."

"Right away sir." The technician made a brief salute with his clipboard, then walked off.

A rumble of thunder drew Gromphs' attention to the open freight doors where the sky was filled with black, split occasionally with bolts of lightning. A thunderclap boomed through the canyon beyond, releasing the inevitable torrent of rain. "Yeah, shut the doors…" he said to nobody in particular.

He turned away as the door motors whined, slowly bringing the steel slabs together until they slammed shut. He was halfway to the Controller Office when his cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, it revealed the caller as someone in the Sys-Op lab.

The voice on the other end wasted no time in getting the message across. "The _Horizon _is down sir! Their reactor redlined and they were forced to initiate an emergency lockdown. Sensors show many dead, some just barely alive."

Gromph swore harshly. "Where is the crash site?"

"The captain managed to bring it down on the eastern shore of Ss'ilhet Dorim island."

Gromph snapped his phone shut.

-----

Grison stood on the edge of a cliff under the pouring rain, leaning on a rake and watching the steel portal that was set into the opposing canyon wall three-hundred feet below his home. A steady banging issued from the portal, followed by grinding sounds and the noise of machinery. He turned at the sound of a familiar voice and watched his father limp towards him, stooped over in old age and relying heavily on a cane for support.

"You got them garden rows fixed yet?" the old man shouted through the weather. He came and stood beside his son.

"They're starting something," Grison replied as he motioned to the portal.

Another grinding noise sounded, then something turned over and began to whine.

"What the hell'r they doin' in there?" the old man inquired to nobody in particular.

The whining increased in pitch, then the portal boomed as the steel doors slammed outward and a convoy of hovercraft sped out the opening, followed by a larger flying vehicle. They dropped twenty feet to the rising water below and sped down the canyon.

"Looks like old Baenre got a bit o' trouble," the old man chuckled. "Goddamn corporate ass!"

Grison shook his head, then turned and walked back to the garden.

-----

Nimor sat quietly on a stool, observing a digital readout on his laptop as Ysandro bent over the operating table, carefully touching a pair of metal electrodes to various contacts on a rectangular ceramic plate. When he was finished, Nimor closed the laptop screen and said, "That's close enough, lets try it again."

Ysandro nodded and turned a switch on the machine next to him. Nimor moved to the other side of the table and stuck a screwdriver into the mess of wires underneath the plate. Finding a slotted knob, he turned it causing the contacts on the plate to move within a millimeter of each other. Withdrawing the screwdriver, he positioned it on another knob and turned it.

A series of sharp snaps split the silence as blue bolts of electricity bridged the contacts in a synchronized rhythm. Nimor nodded to Ysandro, who grabbed a 9/16" wrench and cautiously prodded the hand of their patient. Half a second passed before the limb twitched in response. Nimor wrote something down, then turned his screwdriver half a turn. The arcing electrical bolts became more frequent. "Again," he said.

Ysandro touched the first knuckle on the middle finger, invoking an immediate reaction with enough force to fling the wrench across the room. "Lloth be damned!" he whispered as he pulled his hand away.

"Good, good," Nimor murmured to himself as he jotted another note. He casually reached over and twisted the screwdriver once again. The snapping became a continuous stream of electrical noise and the room was filled with brilliant blue light.

Ysandro retrieved the wrench and returned to the table. "You want to do this one?" he asked.

"No," was the only reply he received as Nimor remained focused on his notes.

"Fuck." Looking around the room for a longer item, Ysandro had no luck and resigned himself to stretching his arm to the limits with the wrench held between his forefinger and thumb. He slowly approached the table, and held as steady as possible while he reached and gently grazed the top of the hand with the wrench. There was a rustle of clothing, a cry of pain, then a thud as Ysandro hit the floor.

Nimor wore a gaze of amusement as he observed Ysandro at his feet, clutching a broken finger, then he shifted his gaze to the patient, and to the 9/16" wrench still clutched tightly in the hand.


End file.
